La Renfermée La Corse

Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1981. First and only edition. 6to (28,5x21cm), illustrated boards. 90pp. Front top corner slightly bumped and a tiny bump at back cover turn-in. Very small inscription with pen at front end paper “Corse Sept. 89”. Overall, in near fine condition.

La Renfermée La Corse is a collaboration between Marie Susini and Chris Marker with a beautiful and bittersweet essay by Susini on her birthplace Corsica, accompanied by Chris Marker’s photographs. Both the text and the photographs break with the usual clichés of Corsica as a vacation destination and show a more rugged environment of the island.

At the age of six, Marie Susini was raised by nuns on Corsica, a period in her life that she processed in her first novel Plein Soleil (1953). She later left Corsica for Marseille and then Paris to escape insularity and the confines of traditional gender roles. Corsica permeates all of Marie Susini’s work, which was praised early on by critics such as Albert Béguin.